the Things the Marsh Remembers ((Closed to Archanex))

[DarkDelights]

Even with both hands, she had a hard time dragging the relatively small stew pot, still over half full. She dragged it from the small campsite to the road, and after stopping for a moment to catch her breath, she began the process of dumping it in a line at the base of the willow trees.

“Here, doggy doggy doggies, come get some of the nice meal I've prepared for you,” she said with a husky laugh, because she wasn't talking about the stew. She was talking about herself.

Wiping the sweat from her brow, she heaved the pot into the hedges where most of the cobblestones she spent the better part of the day pulling up went. With any luck, the sabotauge would wreck a wagon wheel or sprain a traveller's ankle. The damage she had done to the bridge of which the road to Suthainn depended, was considerable. It needed but a wind and a prayer to fall to pieces. She had been working on it for many days and took pride in the results. The only road now lead into the maw of the swamp, and it hungered, she knew. Resting her ample buttocks on a broad stone and adjusting the neckline of her illusionary dress to accentuate her porportions, she waited.

A wailing maiden, I want you to see,
So a wailing maiden, I'll truly be!

To win your trust, you must save a life,
Behind my back you shan't see the knife!

The Dark One's told me to wait for my knight,
And to serve them truly is my life's delight!
For your desperate maiden, you'll surely fight!
Its a man that I seek, who will do what is right!

Come quick, oh brave one, quickly to me,
From jaws of the beast i need be set free!

Oh brave Sir Gallant, is that you I hear?
Come quick, for the beasties are drawing so near!

She heard an expected growl from the bush, as if arriving to play audience for the culmination of her song, drawn by the smell of food. The woman stood up, and crouched low, her arm held forward between her face and the one, two, then three wolves who also padded onto the road, no more than ten feet away. Dheathain marsh wolves were small by the standards which wolves are judged, with brick red fur growing in mottled patches over grey skin. Partially submerged in the bog, they were well suited to disguising themselves as a mound of dead grass while they waited for larger predators to pass them by. But when confronting single, helpless prey, they were highly agressive and were fueled by the rabies that every third or fourth member of their species posessed. Still able to function as the shocktroopers of a pack, the rabid wolves were always the first on the scene and the first to bite. Their disease heightened agression and fueled action by way of pain, but was not fatal to its host as was the case with most other strains of the disease. An animal, or person, could live a good long time if it had enough room to stalk, kill, and eat.

It wasn't solely insanity that caused the woman to approach the closest of the beasts, slowly, her arm outstretched. It was her orders. Someone was coming, she knew. Someone she was decreed to meet by her malicious patrons, unlike the unfortunate couple she chanced upon earlier in the day, to their misfortune. Someone is coming, the stagnant air, ripe with swamp gas whispered. She made her move, knowing if it was the will of the powers that she should die, then she was doing naught but her due-dilligence. She lashed her arm forward at the closest wolf as the other two circled her. It didn't take the bait. It skittered back two paces, and gnashed it jaws, barking shrilly, and spraying foam into the air. Its eyes were bloodshot and whitish-green gunk pooled and crusted in their corners. It gnashed its teeth and snarled again, and the woman lept forward with hostility, keeping her arm blocking the path from the wolf's maw to her throat. The wolf took the bait. It clamped its jaws down on her arm like a vice, as the other wolves bayed with excitement, waiting for their turn to join in the killing. Blood coursed from the wound and the woman shuddered in extacy, almost forgetting her mission; the part of the damsel in distress. So keenly she felt the call of the grave, and service in a bleak, slimy, cold afterlife. Paradise.

She wailed.

The wolf dug its jaws in cruely and did not letup the assault.

“Help me!” she shrieked. “Won't someone please help me!?”